


heart, lungs, soul, arteries and all

by kaffas (hoopoe)



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bottom Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Canon Compliant, Corrective Abuse, Drunk Sex, Drunken Confessions, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fights, Friends to Lovers, Heavy Angst, Jaskier | Dandelion Being a Feral Bastard, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Sex Magic, Top Jaskier | Dandelion, Touch-Starved Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 08:35:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25467856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoopoe/pseuds/kaffas
Summary: Geralt touches this thing he is not allowed, gauges the fit of Jaskier's smile alongside his hand, the curve of his trim waist, the weight of his softening cock. He measures it up in his mind, memorizing its lines and proportions, so he knows where it fits in his fortifications.It is no easier, this time. Geralt's clawed fingers trace Axii. He watches again as Jaskier's expressive face goes blank.Geralt has had four great loves in his life. He has lost all but one.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Female Character(s), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Countess de Stael
Comments: 37
Kudos: 280
Collections: Interesting Character and/or Interesting Relationship Development





	heart, lungs, soul, arteries and all

**Author's Note:**

> Unofficial tags: More Ring Composition Than the Average Tree, Secret Pillow Princess Geralt of Rivia, Opportunisexuals, Geralt Likes Men, Erotic Hand-to-Hand Combat
> 
> -
> 
> Started writing it. Had a breakdown. Bon appetit.
> 
>  **This is fairly gentle darkfic, but still darkfic. Mind the tags.** It’s also just a cruel take on the old “lampshade the tropes” fic. **In the interest of avoiding spoilers, the tags will be explained and described as clinically as possible in the endnotes (so trigger warnings all around).**
> 
> Follows along with Netflix events but generally adheres to game and book canon as well. I’m taking this opportunity to imbue Netflix Softman Jaskier with some of the Bitch I’ll Kill You energy of Dandelion. The song this time is “The Path” from the Witcher 3 DLC.
> 
> Title from Imogen Heap - “You Know Where to Find Me,” a love song from the river Thames and my absolute favorite of her oeuvre.

"Eskel," Geralt laughs, breathless. "Where are we going?" In his hand, Eskel's is rough with blisters and calluses, scabbed over where a stray sword blow grazed him.

Geralt tightens his fingers around Eskel's, willingly tugged along, and by the time Eskel graces Geralt with a reply, it is obvious where they are headed. "The kitchen, Geralt, Osbert's just brought in a whole _wagon_ of food. I saw honeycakes!" Eskel walks a bit faster, urgent, wrapping both his arms fully around Geralt's one, so Geralt must choose between keeping up or tripping.

" _Honeycakes,_ " Geralt repeats reverently, conceding his arm to Eskel's grip. "We'll be caught." He does not seem cowed, and indeed is not deterred by the prospect; he has sat many times, and will sit once more, next to Eskel, gamely shining all the silver in Kaer Morhen for the first crack at a rare dessert.

Osbert remains rummaging in the kitchen when they stumble their way to the door, tangled together and giggling under their breath, shushing one another in vain. Eskel peers sneakily around the door frame they've tucked themselves behind and reports. "He's organizing the pantry."

"Do you see the cakes, though," Geralt insists with all the gravity of his sixteen years, and Eskel cuffs his ear.

"Yes, _Geralt,_ I _see_ them. They're on the top shelf. One of us will have to climb."

"I'm better than you at climbing."

"Only because you're made of—oh, great buggering _fuck,_ he's coming this way, _shit_ —"

Eskel presses Geralt flat to the wall, holding him there as they strain to listen, bodies tense, breath bated. A few pregnant moments pass, and then Geralt sighs. "He's gone out the receiving door."

"Needs to put away the mule," Eskel agrees, backing off just enough to look down at Geralt. Geralt's heart beats fast with the thrill of their impending heist. He lets out the excitement the best way he knows how, pressing his smile to Eskel's high cheekbone, his jaw scattered with pubescent stubble, his warm neck salty with the day's sweat. Eskel runs a hand over the thick curls of Geralt's hair, indulgent, before reminding Geralt, "Honeycakes."

"Honeycakes," Geralt agrees amiably, the tone of finality translating to a last firm kiss on Eskel's lips. "I'm climbing. You catch."

Together they scurry across the kitchen, steeped in the smell of sizzling lard and wheat and seasoned pork. The pantry door is, predictably, both closed and locked. Eskel raises an eyebrow at Geralt and gestures expectantly. Geralt raises an eyebrow back. They hold eye contact until Geralt relents, kneeling and extracting lockpicks from Melitele knows where. Eskel tries for a casual lean against the frame of the pantry door; Geralt feels Eskel's eyes hot on him as he works. "Give me a minute."

"Geralt. Beauty of Kaer Morhen, light of my life, I _desperately_ need you to hurry it up. Varin will send out his hellhounds any second now."

A soft triumphant sound from Geralt, the click of the lock pins, and Geralt is yanking the pantry open, tumbling in half on top of Eskel and shutting the door hurriedly behind them. "Huldra recumbent, they really are way the fuck up there," Geralt gripes, casting a dark look at his lanky limbs, no longer so agile as he was at ten or even fourteen.

"Right, so get to climbing," Eskel quips, even as Geralt gingerly steps up onto the lowest shelf. Ominous creak under the tips of his boots. He widens his stance, redistributing his weight, and shimmies to his right, stepping up another shelf.

"You've been training alone again. The pendulum?"

"Stop looking at my arse." Geralt's cheeks flush hot with adventure and bashfulness, and he redoubles his concentration, inching ever closer to paydirt. "You're one to talk. Seems your shoulders get wider by the day. 'S a marvel you can fit through the door."

"We're growing up, getting old, my friend. Before you know it we'll look like Master Rennes. Bushy mustache and no sense of adventure."

Stretching out his right arm, Geralt's fingertips fumble at a package wrapped in wax paper and twine. It's barely out of his reach, but moving toward it requires a slow, careful repositioning of each limb. "If you grow a mustache, I'll never kiss you again," Geralt promises, and adds, "Irascible, that one. Imagine us as old malcontents." He's recently learned the word 'irascible,' and he quite likes it.

"You're too sweet to be a malcontent," Eskel argues, and Geralt takes the opportunity to snag the package of cakes and fling it toward Eskel, who catches it handily and does an aborted jig of ecstasy on the spot, unknotting the twine as Geralt leaps down from the shelves.

"Dessert is served," Geralt declares, dusting off his trousers. Eskel's eyes—blue as a mountain spring to Geralt's earthy brown—sparkle with their small victory as Geralt saunters over, preening.

Eskel tears off a syrupy, sticky bite and holds it out to Geralt. "Your finder's fee."

Geralt pushes his hair out of his face and leans in, eats out of Eskel's hand. Hums in satisfaction and applies his tongue perhaps more liberally than strictly necessary. The cloying sweetness of honey-soaked almond mingles with the salt of Eskel's skin, and Geralt groans, blissful, as Eskel pulls him in for a lush kiss. He tastes of honey and there are crumbs on his lips and Geralt sinks into him, into this dip and roll of tongues, closing his eyes and reaching out with his remaining senses to take in Eskel.

Warm skin, scrape of stubble, the scent of leather and metal and mint, the rendered tallow soap they all use, and something that Geralt does not know a name for beyond _safe_ and _friend_ and _home_. Eskel's honey-sweet lips slip over Geralt's mouth, his jaw, down to bite at his neck in a way that blanks his mind, leaves nothing for Geralt except _Eskel_ and _more_ and _now_. The way his arms fit around Eskel's waist has never yet changed, and for the second time today Geralt falls to his knees in front of Eskel, unreservedly in love.

"Yes, yes, let me," Eskel breathes, freeing his belts and flies with fumbling hands. Geralt snags another bite of honeycake as he waits, helpless against the current of such hedonism, except to be drawn into it.

The world pares down to this: The stretch of his lips around Eskel's cock, Eskel's heaving breath and his moans, bitten off at the quick. Leather, mint, and musk, the heaviness of arousal between Geralt's spread legs. Eskel inhales need and exhales praise, strokes lust-clumsy fingers through Geralt's hair, bends nearly double when he comes hot and fast over Geralt's tongue, wrapping Geralt up in his arms as Geralt swallows.

"You, you are so," Eskel says in a rush, between voracious little kisses. "Did you—?"

"Not yet," Geralt murmurs, shifting on his knees to press the heel of his hand to his clothed cock. "Talk to me." Slides leather through metal, gets his belt and trousers just open enough to touch himself. Eskel keeps up a litany of filth above him, going on and on about _so good, Geralt, so handsome on your knees, so fair with your lips around my cock._

It doesn't take much. Geralt spills over his hand with a choked gasp and pitches forward, catching his breath in the soft space between Eskel's thigh and hip. A tender touch cradles him there, still for a moment, silent.

From outside, too close: "Nay, Master Varin, they weren't in neither of their quarters, sir."

"No, they were here instead. Look, lock's scuffed. Closer. See, just barely."

And then: "They was in the pantry again, I wager."

"Then they will polish the silver again."

Geralt knows this: The Trial of the Grasses affects the nervous system, slows the reflex to fight or flee down to a choice.

He and Eskel have not undergone this Trial, and so they freeze. The door swings open, innocuous.

It's Gweld there with Master Varin, Gweld who starts to say, "Geralt, Eskel," before Varin cuts him off.

"Back to the training grounds."

"Master—"

"Back to the training grounds, Gweld. Tell Vesemir where you've been."

Gweld skitters away. Geralt takes a deep breath, bows his head, moves his hands to rest on his thighs, the perfect pose of Wolf School meditation. Above him, Eskel shifts as if to shield Geralt from Master Varin, who rounds on them immediately. Geralt cannot see him from this angle, but a chill runs up his spine from the anticipation of ice in Varin's amber gaze.

"What have you to say for yourselves?"

Geralt knows the answer before Eskel gives it. "Nothing." Defiant. Geralt pictures the sharp jut of Eskel's chin. His hands close into fists.

"Geralt?"

"Nothing, Master Varin."

Another silence, drawn-out, neither of them daring to speak further. "These aren't the halls of _Ban Ard_ , and you're not limp-wristed ploughing _sorcerers_ in training. You're walking out into a world that _hates you_. And here you are, _giving them reason to!_ " Varin pauses, breathing hard. "You'll be punished for this, of course. Join me and Master Vesemir on the ramparts at dusk."

They won't be shining the silver, not this time.

"Put yourselves to rights and get back to the training grounds," Varin orders, and Geralt would swear he hears something rueful, even near to sorrowful, behind his swordmaster's harsh words.

***

The human body does not remember pain.

The mutagens take away much of what is left, the Grasses and the Dreams breaking apart and rebuilding them from the ground up.

Geralt is _special_. It is none of it enough for him. He breaks too well, is reshaped in too striking, too vibrant a model.

They put him through a second round. The color leaches out of him, dyed in fractured memory. Mahogany hair and golden skin make way for _cold_ and _pale_ , curls collapsing to lank waves of grey, gold forfeiting to the chill white of marble.

Sunk deep under the waves of time and transformation, what Geralt remembers is this:

The lines of Vesemir's stern, careworn face next to Geralt's. The tug and burn of rope around his wrists, wood against his bare chest. The sting of northern autumn wind on his skin, stripped naked in the night air.

The crack of a whip. Eskel's pained gasps next to Geralt, barely audible above the blood pounding in Geralt's ears, the red-hot burn of his flesh splitting around leather. Over and over, flaying their backs open to the clouds and stars.

Vesemir's voice, reciting, authoritative. The heft of a hidebound book in his wrinkled hands. “The offenders being hereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry…” _Crack._

“...shall suffer such pains of death and losses…” _Crack._

“...as felons do, according to the Common Laws of these Realms. Whosoever is convicted of the abominable crime of sodomy…” _Crack._

“...committed either with mankind or with any animal, shall be liable to be imprisoned in the Realms for life, or for any term not less than two years.”

 _Crack._ Geralt does not remember pain. He remembers, though, the moment pain gives way to a numbness slick with blood.

Vesemir reads on.

_“The crime of sodomy is a detestable and abominable sin, amongst all proper religious folk not to be named, committed by carnal knowledge against the ordinance of worldly Creators, and order of nature, by mankind with mankind, or with brute beast, or by womankind with brute beast.”_

Eskel's shaky gasps transmute to sobbing pleas. Geralt does not _feel,_ anymore.

***

**Years later. A lifetime, perhaps.**

***

(1)

There is a bard at Lower Posada, and this bard is currently every one of Geralt's problems.

He is a fresh-faced eighteen. He carries himself with an intellectual swagger, the unearned confidence of those who spend a career learning in lecture halls, meriting themselves nothing beyond a scroll lined in Minuscule stating that they have learned something.

Geralt is not convinced that the bard has, in fact, learned _anything,_ let alone _something._

"Now, now, my good Sir _Of Rivia_ , you've got your coin, so put away that sour puss and let's, er, mosey on out of this fine establishment, shall we? Don't like the way the barman's looking at me. Usually precedes the launching of heavier items, and blessed though I am with the gift of beauty, I doubt my burgeoning career can sustain—"

Geralt frog-marches the bard— _Jaskier,_ of course he calls himself _Jaskier_ —out the door. Jaskier babbles the whole way. Geralt stitches together the tattered shreds of his patience, torn apart by hisses of _The Butcher of Blaviken_ and Nettly's unwitting skill at poking fingers into injuries half-healed.

Jaskier has the right of one thing, though—Geralt has his coin, and a contract, and now, apparently, an entourage. Irritated, he continues to be, but cannot muster the effort to be properly spiteful. He leads Roach through the rolling hills of Dol Blathanna at a pace sedate enough to accommodate Jaskier's meandering gait.

"...Oh, I could be your barker! Spreading the tales of Geralt of Rivia," Jaskier proclaims, "the—the _Butcher of Blaviken!_ "

Nerves and fresh grief rip through Geralt's composure, slicing through the _newness_ of Jaskier, of his adrenaline-excitement-and-clean-sweat, his sweeping gestures and colorful clothes.

Jaskier doubles over with the softened force of Geralt's blow, so he's at least smart enough to move most of his vital organs out of the way. Geralt wonders if he learned that at Oxenfurt.

He looks up at Geralt over Geralt's own fist with stars in his eyes. Blue like sapphires. _(Blue like a mountain spring.)_ Geralt clings to the cold, pulls back, stays rigid and unbending as he was taught.

Jaskier straightens up and launches immediately into soliloquy. "So is this about the Butcher thing, the onion thing, or the two cocks thing, for my future reference, because, as your self-appointed crier of deeds, I do think, for the record, that one cock for each hand would be a _splendid_ quality in a specimen such as yourself—"

The leather of Roach's lead creaks, leaves welts in Geralt's hands. "Fuck off, bard." Deep breath rushes in, suffusing him with calm. "I've got only the one."

"Yes, yes, and is it—"

"Jaskier. Leave it."

"Leaving it, it's left, but I reserve the right to ruminate upon it."

Abject panic sluices through him, this time, or what would be abject panic if Geralt still felt _fear_. " _No,_ " he barks. " _Jaskier._ I told you to leave it."

Jaskier opens his mouth to respond, but Geralt, mercifully, catches the scent of Nettly's "devil"—a Sylvan, for all intents and purposes harmless—and nudges Roach into a trot, leaving Jaskier at a jog to catch up.

Still, through wheezes of breath, he speaks. "Reading between the lines and gut-punches, _chum_..."

Everything goes rapidly downhill after that, as things tend to do in Dol Blathanna.

***

"Do you often leave a place as soon as there's nothing for you to hit?" Jaskier asks, trudging along the muddy road beside Roach. Geralt, from atop her, hums, evading the question neatly.

"Think you'd be used to it. Saw how welcome you were at Posada."

Jaskier yelps a protest. " _Ugh!_ Boors, boors, all of them, and especially you. You most of all. Not a lick of taste between the lot." He grouches to himself a bit, leaving Geralt in relative peace, before looking up at Geralt again. "Remind me, Geralt," he begins, and Geralt spares a prickly thought for when the bard had become so _familiar_ , "where are we going, now?"

" _We_ are heading west, through Hagge and into Redania. _You_ are going to Oxenfurt, where you will _stay_ and trouble me no further."

" _Trouble you no further,_ " Jaskier mimics back at him. "Who was it, Geralt, that so tenderly dressed your suppurating flesh wounds from the, the, ekki-whatsit—"

"Ekimmara."

"Yes, that, you know, I'd rather thought vampires would be a bit less _beardy_."

"Some of them are," Geralt admits and focuses his gaze forward, determined not to acknowledge Jaskier's sudden scramble for a notebook.

The scratch of graphite on pulp accompanies Jaskier when he speaks next. "Who reattached your Witchery bits, Geralt, you never answered my question."

"You're being dramatic." Geralt had cauterized and cleaned his own _suppurating flesh wounds._ Jaskier's part in the whole affair had been to rummage through Geralt's potions, a part intended mostly to occupy Jaskier with a little scavenger hunt, keep him busy and neither retching nor fainting.

"Admit it, Witcher. I _helped._ "

Against his better judgment, Geralt grants Jaskier the tiniest, most sardonic of smirks. "Fine."

That's enough to send Jaskier over the moon, gamboling ahead and shouting back slant rhymes to 'ekimmara.' In the two weeks since they left Posada, Geralt has begun to learn Jaskier, his moods and flights of fancy. Jaskier grabs limpet-like onto Geralt's every word, each minute change of expression, and Geralt in turn metes them out strategically. Calculates the best angle to deflect Jaskier off of him, because Jaskier is forthright as any arrow.

Somewhere southwest of where the Dyfne meets the Pontar, Jaskier flags. Geralt is a witcher; he is conditioned to sleep anywhere, at any time convenient. Jaskier is only human, painfully young, and needs the luxuries of a bedroll and something like a night's rest. To that end, Geralt directs Jaskier, by way of Roach, to a clearing a bit off the main road.

"We'll camp here tonight," he states, terse, and Jaskier yawns his relief. He sets to gathering scrub for the fire without a word from Geralt, falling into the rhythm they've set over the last two weeks.

It cannot become _easy_. It _will_ not. Geralt pries away another part of himself, the remains of a rancid, necrotic part that would _dare_ to think—

Outwardly, he plops down next to Roach and attacks his steel sword with a whetstone. _Eskel,_ sings honed metal against quartz. _Eskel, Eskel, Eskel._

"—ralt? A bit of Igni, please? It's a lovely hare you've got us, but lovelier cooked."

Geralt snaps out of his reverie, glancing sharply up at Jaskier. He traces the sign of Igni, dismissive. Jaskier, exhausted and despondent, casts his eyes from hare to knife to fire and back again. Uncertain, Geralt realizes with an odd twist of his heart, where to begin. This useless, pretty thing.

"See to the bedrolls, bard," Geralt commands, trying for brusque and hitting closer to benevolent. _I will take care of our meal,_ Geralt does not say. It is more efficient to simply _do,_ going through the motions of skinning and gutting and spitting and roasting. He divides the meager meat into two portions, one heaping and one spare, and passes the former to Jaskier.

"Thank you, Geralt," Jaskier says, meeting Geralt's eyes, and this moment, Geralt knows, is why he has kept Jaskier close to him, away from harm. There is a _genuineness_ to him, an earnest warmth, and Geralt has always swathed himself in cold.

He is pulled closer, inexorably closer, until Jaskier rolls his eyes and moves the rest of the distance, settling his warm weight against Geralt's side. "You aren't so bad, Witcher," Jaskier sighs. His head droops to Geralt's shoulder. Geralt's unnatural pulse quickens, gives a heartfelt throb. "Smelly...boorish...rude...but you're comfortable, which means you're...probably good. Maybe...even...the best."

 _Abominable,_ Geralt's heart carves into his ribs. _Yes,_ he responds. Clench of his jaw, metallic grind of his teeth. Jaskier's hair brushing Geralt's neck. He smells of dirt and sweat and _warm_ and _alive_ and Geralt _will not let this become easy._

An ache begins at Geralt’s temple. A quiet whimper escapes from his lips, and Jaskier hums sleepily in reply, a wordless question.

Geralt traces the sign of Axii on the soft, so soft, skin of Jaskier's hand. He feels the instant it sinks into Jaskier, cutting his strings, wiping him blank. "You went to your bedroll after you ate. You fell asleep immediately. You didn't wake until dawn."

***

(2)

Sometimes, it is like this:

Laughter courses light through Geralt's body, playing at his eyes and crowding in his throat. Jaskier wades a few laborious steps back in the stream, gearing up for another attempt.

He manages to build impressive momentum for a sopping-wet bard in only his smalls, might even have met his goal of bodily knocking Geralt into the water had Geralt not taken one big step to the side.

"Oh, _fuck_ you," Jaskier burbles ardently from where he's gone ass-over-tip into the stream. He slings a petulant splash of water in Geralt's direction, and Geralt raises an eyebrow down at him. Bends down and, oh-so-primly, sticks his hand in the stream and forms the sign of Aard.

Jaskier _screeches_ , swearing bloody vengeance on Geralt's house, his ancestors, and three separate deities, hurtling at a stagger out of the water with a resounding _smack_ to Geralt's thigh. Geralt weathers this with good grace, surrenders to a quiet bark of laughter. When he looks up again, though, at Jaskier tromping indignantly around the underbrush, the moment flushes from his system, leaving behind resigned, alert calm.

"Bard," he calls, and Jaskier's smallclothes hit Geralt's chest with a wet _plop._ " _Jaskier_ ," Geralt tries again, marveling at the gall, the _temerity_.

"Yes, Geralt?" Jaskier simpers, crossing his arms, shifting his weight, unabashed at his nakedness.

"Help with the laundry or fuck off."

Jaskier makes a sound like _hmph,_ looking archly at Geralt down the slope of his sunburnt nose. "Then off I shall fuck. I believe you've got this handled."

Rustling of bare footsteps, Jaskier calling out, "Hullo, Roach!," skin on fabric, notes plucked, repeated, changed minutely, plucked anew.

***

Once, it is like this:

"You're not _trying_ hard enough, Jaskier," Geralt grouses, long-suffering, while Jaskier wrings his wrist and flexes his fingers, readjusting his grip on Geralt's spare trophy knife. Jaskier makes a rude gesture with his free hand. "You have to come at me with the intent to kill."

Jaskier's lips pull into a comical grimace. "Yeah, see, that's the thing, is that I don't have much of that to begin with, and I'd much rather you be alive to chase off bandits yourself while I, er, provide moral support."

Geralt grumbles something that resembles "morally supporting yourself into the ground," and Jaskier flicks his wrist, sending the knife end over end over end until—

"What the fuck, Jaskier," Geralt demands, training a wary eye on the knife embedded firmly in the tree trunk next to Geralt's head.

"What _what the fuck, Jaskier,_ I had to win my coin somehow in college, you know, neither room nor board pays for itself, and no tavern in Oxenfurt's paying a _student_ to _sing._ What a ridiculous notion." He traipses over, leaning pointedly around Geralt to yank the knife free. Hands it back to Geralt with a quick smile, pats Geralt daintily on the chest. "What was it you said. _You're not fast or strong, so you've got to try to be smart?_ "

Geralt does not _gape,_ but it's a near thing. Peals of laughter ring out from Jaskier as he studies Geralt's expression, and Geralt, it must be said, for once has no idea what his face is doing. "I have one 'useful' skill and you're about to die of shock. Really, Geralt, I'll just try never to surprise you again, I'm not sure your old heart can take it."

He steps away from Geralt then, stripping off the dingy linen shirt he wears, folding it and tossing it aside to lie with his doublet at the edge of the clearing. "Are you making me do this or not, Geralt, this was your brilliant idea. _En garde,_ you, er, fiend!" He stands facing Geralt, arms akimbo, patently not in any fit position for hand-to-hand practice.

Geralt pushes his hair out of his face and meets Jaskier head-on.

At twenty-one now, Jaskier is strong, corded with wiry muscle. He is untrained in how to use it, though, his weather-chapped fists seeking out weak spots like he's a stone lighter than he is. Geralt keeps himself in check, takes stock of Jaskier's patterns, tries to think like Vesemir. Geralt grabs Jaskier's fist mid-blow, directing it to his own solar plexus. "Here," he explains, and, "Angle your fist up. Put some force behind it."

Jaskier immediately takes the advice. The punch smarts like an old bruise, and Geralt coughs more out of surprise than pain. He rolls his eyes, catching Jaskier's wrists easily and tossing him down toward the dry grass. Jaskier may be strong, but a witcher he is not, and he puts up a token struggle as Geralt's knee digs into his back.

"Cute," Geralt taunts, transferring Jaskier's wrists to one hand.

"I am...not _cute_...Witcher," Jaskier argues, squirming in Geralt's grasp. Geralt sets him free all at once and, in a tumble of limbs, Jaskier flails over onto his back, Geralt’s knees swept from under him in the fallout. The ground rushes up to meet Geralt and he catches himself on reflex, landing hard on one hand and one elbow.

Jaskier looks up at him. One eyebrow quirks as he slides his gaze deliberately down, an unspoken snide comment on their position. When Geralt does not move, holding himself tense as the air between them, Jaskier comes back to meet Geralt's eyes, his chin tilting in a challenge.

"I am _adorable._ " His voice has dropped a register, hushed, intimate.

And just like that, they’re kissing.

Geralt groans, awash in Jaskier's teeth dragging across his lips, his thigh pressing harshly up between Geralt's, his tongue licking up every moan and whimper as he explores what sounds he can tease out of Geralt with those string-callused fingertips digging his shirt out of his waistband, chafing over Geralt's waist, his ribs, his chest. Geralt hauls Jaskier up on top of him, spreading himself out to be touched, lost in the pulsing warmth radiating out from Jaskier's mouth on his neck, watching helpless with want as Jaskier finds his place between Geralt's splayed legs.

"You're _loud,_ " Jaskier observes with awe. Geralt chokes back a moan as Jaskier's hips roll into his, messy and wanton and utterly perfect. "No, don't _stop,_ Geralt, it's _gorgeous._ "

And Geralt knows by the tightness of his chest and the heat at his lips, his groin, the need to feel, to be _consumed,_ to burn alive in the warmth of Jaskier's body and words and his _being,_ that he cannot have this.

He lies under Jaskier, after, his stomach covered in their cooling spend and his movement restricted by the trousers they couldn't be arsed to get past mid-thigh. Jaskier's brow touches Geralt's, unbearably fond. Kisses stick to Geralt's cold skin, at his cheeks, nose, chin.

Geralt touches this thing he is not allowed, gauges the fit of Jaskier's smile alongside his hand, the curve of his trim waist, the weight of his softening cock. He measures it up in his mind, memorizing its lines and proportions, so he knows where it fits in his fortifications.

It is no easier, this time, when Geralt disentangles himself, hitching up his trousers and darting away from Jaskier.

"Geralt?" Gentle confusion, with an edge of hurt. "Geralt, are you—?"

Geralt's clawed fingers trace Axii. He watches again as Jaskier's expressive face goes blank.

"You washed yourself in the stream after hand-to-hand practice. You spent the afternoon practicing ‘Toss a Coin,’ and I went to hunt. You didn't see me until dinner."

As Jaskier lurches away toward the stream, Geralt feels the familiar welling of a choice— _fight or flee?_

He really has not changed, he muses distantly. Geralt sinks to his knees on the ground, covered in sweat and grass and spend, and freezes, for just long enough.

***

In the time between, when Geralt deposits Jaskier safe in the hands of a longtime lover or the lecture halls of Oxenfurt, it is like this:

Her name is Janna. She wears too much perfume, heady with marjoram and vanilla, but she shrugs, says, "You ent the first witcher to walk through that door," and watches dispassionately as Geralt counts coins onto an end table.

She is porcelain skin and deep chestnut hair flowing in artfully untidy waves over her shoulder. She buries her tapered fingers in her own hair, arches her back when Geralt gets her where he wants, her thighs astride his face. He surrounds himself with her, licking up into her to taste salt and bitter perfume spread across his tongue, answering moans and sighs with hunger, with _need_ , with cut-off growls and the jerk of his hips into her hand.

She comes three times on his tongue, shaking apart above him, grinding down until he is wet from cheeks to chin. She returns the favor, after, takes him deep into her throat. Makes to slide an oiled finger into Geralt, moves her hand away obligingly when he shakes his head.

He comes from her mouth, rolls over, takes her fast and thorough, the bite of her sharp nails in the flesh of his thighs, his arse. Her keening cries and the color of her lips leaving behind trails of pink on his chest, and she holds his head to her breasts as he pulls out and finishes on her downy stomach, sweaty, sated.

Geralt lies sprawled atop the blankets as her perfume follows her from the room, his 40 crowns jingling faintly in her purse. He dreads this moment, always, when scent and heat fade into clammy, barren cold, and he arranges the blankets over himself, tries to recapture something of her with his face against the down pillow.

Like every warm thing in Geralt's life, she seeps away, leaving him just the same, cold and longing.

***

(3)

Geralt watches.

He watches Duny and Pavetta, enfolded in a rhapsodic embrace at the heart of Pavetta's Chaos. Watches the curse lift, the ensuing tears. Had Geralt ever cried so much?

Watches, in mutagen-dulled horror, as Pavetta retches. He puts two and two together—her determination for a betrothal and the cloying earthiness originating from her.

"The Law of Surprise," Geralt had claimed, casting about for a way, any way to leave behind this betrothal and this court and the center of gods-damned _attention,_ and now Geralt has a _child._ He can't claim to be _dumbfounded_ often, but the gods, if they truly are up there, look down on Geralt at every turn and ask themselves _what more can he bear?_

Ermion—Mousesack, he's going by these days—waylays Geralt with talk of doom and Destiny and Geralt has never been so grateful for Jaskier's hand on his arm, towing him resolutely away from the rubble.

"Wow, you, a father, what a night, Geralt! Do you know what, you really need to unwind, we have the coin, let's find you a nice—"

"Jaskier," Geralt begins, cutting Jaskier off before he finishes the thought and Geralt truly loses his temper.

Jaskier's hand tightens on Geralt's forearm. "Right, let's at least get you out of here," he amends, wine on his breath. "To our room and then we'll figure out the rest, hm?"

"Hmm," Geralt affirms, and if he presses closer to Jaskier in the throng of the crowd, it's just good bodyguarding. Jaskier holds him there, steady, as Geralt's mead-soaked mind does its best impersonation of Calanthe's great hall.

They make it back to the inn relatively unscathed, having encountered and dispatched without bloodshed a horde of Jaskier's besotted fans. Roses and hyssop reach ominously from behind the door to their shared lodgings, and Jaskier's hand leaves Geralt's blue-silk doublet as he stammers. "Ah, Lucia, you're here! Wonderful!" The woman on Jaskier's bed casts a confused glance between the two of them, her lascivious smirk giving way to concern. Geralt recognizes her then as one of Pavetta's retinue.

"Is he staying?" she asks, cagey. Jaskier visibly treads water before coming to a conclusion.

"Yes. He's staying." His tone brooks no argument, and Lucia seems to acquiesce as Geralt presents no threat, sinking tacitly to his knees next to the unoccupied bed, drawing meditation like a cloak around his mind.

Distant, their voices, the sounds of pleasure. Still, Geralt shrinks from them, retreating further into the recesses of half-consciousness and trailing, anguished, after repose. He casts himself out, grasping vainly at sleep, a few hours to forget this night in its entirety (swirls of color and goblet after goblet of mead, the gravid ozone of Chaos and the way Geralt's stomach churned at the bitter scent of bile).

He escapes the night, finds himself somewhere darker, harried by the vision of Renfri, noble features and red, red blood. Scrape of her pin as it pricks him, one last reminder. Of Eskel, seven years ago, or is it eight, now? He seeks Geralt's advice: A child of surprise, a daughter of the Black Sun, _Deidre,_ her name dear and deadly across Eskel's lips.

Taste of ale in the air, close conversation in a half-lit mine outside of Kaer Morhen. Geralt makes the same mistake twice, knows it like the agony of Renfri's face behind his closed eyes, but _maybe,_ maybe _this time,_ maybe, if he sends Deidre away, he can spare Eskel the same pain.

It is worse the second time, so much worse.

Geralt is pinned down on all sides by archespores and hears Eskel shout a warning, the sing of steel through the air, the rip of flesh and sinew. Ice takes Geralt. Cold efficiency. Cut down all in your path. It is what he has been made for.

Sabrina Glevissig stands over Eskel's body, so close to death. Her green dress is covered to the elbows in blood, stained a murky brown. She tells Geralt to go after Deidre. Asks, weary, _Don't you have somewhere to be?_

It is such a strange sensation, to touch the scars transforming the sleeping face of his first love and find himself at so deep a loss. Geralt's heart reaches out to Eskel, honed keen on the edge of decades apart, and cries out, _You are so beautiful,_ and Geralt cannot speak. He leaves Eskel's sickbed as soon as Lambert comes.

In his own room, behind a barred door and battened window, Geralt sobs, ugly, broken things. He had not known his heart could _break,_ its shards piercing ice-like through the veil of his Trials. He looks down and expects to see the twin of Eskel's wound, gutting him, expects yet more blood to steam off the floor. Geralt did this, Geralt _did this_ —

He lurches out of meditation. Blood, always blood. On his hands, on his lips. Ache in his jaw. His ribs feel split open all over again, and there is Jaskier, beautiful in ecstasy. His eyes meet Geralt's in the wild, frenzied aftermath of memory and between them is _warm, reassuring. It will be okay. Look at me, love, just look at me, keep your eyes on me._

Geralt is drunk and full of mistakes. He touches Jaskier and ruins him, never quite free of that sixteen-year-old boy who listened as his lover's back bled and was reminded that the world does not want him to exist. The gods look down on him and ask, _What more can he bear?_

The answer is apparently this: Jaskier's bare skin in candlelight as he walks his fair-faced girl to the top of the stairs and turns back to Geralt. His sapphire-blue eyes dancing as he kneels next to Geralt, takes his face in both hands and asks, "Where did you go, Geralt?"

Geralt does not answer. "Be here with me, then," Jaskier requests. His gaze turns sharp as Geralt's hand twitches, impulsive, toward Axii. He threads his callus-rough fingers through Geralt's and grips _hard,_ aims to _hurt,_ his mouth and jaw working furiously.

"No, not _again,_ Geralt, it's not yours to take," Jaskier breathes, low and dangerous. "This isn't just _yours._ This is mine too, and I don't know why—don't expect you to _explain,_ because when have you _ever_ explained a _thing_ to me—"

It can't be, Jaskier cannot be saying this, because Geralt has been so _careful._ And yet, here they are, and Jaskier's words tumble out harsh and hurt and accusatory.

"I remember the fire, and I was moving toward you, and then nothing, Geralt, I remember hitting the ground and...the weight of you, and then—nothing! And, both times, feeling like I could fall _so in love with you_ and I could have _stayed,_ and then _nothing!_ "

Jaskier’s fine voice breaks on a yell as he finishes. He shakes his head, knowing as well as Geralt does that he will receive no answer. He stands, pulls on layer after layer of clothing like armor. “You’re the best man I know, Geralt, when you let yourself be.” Even now, Jaskier reaches out to reassure, and Geralt cannot reach back.

Jaskier leaves. Geralt watches.

***

(4)

Jaskier's fancies change with the seasons. They sober up, do not speak of the night after Pavetta's betrothal, and set out. Geralt leaves Jaskier with the Countess of Something-or-Other, plying his trade under her voluptuous skirts, and wends his way out of Cintra, into Temeria.

He gives Brokilon a wide berth. Yearns to enter, when he passes its looming trees, but forgetting is not Geralt's lot in life. He carves through hives of endregas, tans wolf pelts for spare coin, dispatches more drowners and noonwraiths and vengeful leshens than he thought inhabited southeast Temeria. Jaskier built his reputation from _mindless killer_ to _hero of the people,_ but it is Geralt who chooses to maintain it, who passes wakeful nights drenched in rain because he saw the sadness lining a widow's eyes.

The first year, it is fresh. Cintra and Renfri and Eskel and Jaskier whisper to him as he grinds celandine and berbercane and myrtle and crow's eye; if he can't sleep, he will make do with Swallow, and make he does. He hits Vizima and tracks down a serial killer, crushes the man's windpipe in his bare hand just to feel the savage give of flesh and bone. Turns west toward Thanedd, south again to Kerrack. Brokilon pulls at him, keeps him close.

He skirts the forest, ranges out, yet always comes back. It has something for him, he thinks, and will not stop curling its shadowy fingers in his mind until he accepts.

The second year, the third year, the fourth, fifth, and sixth, they are easier. Geralt, the Wolf School's perfect witcher, can heal almost any wound to his body; the mutagens do not heal his mind. If they do, it is a slow, tortuous convalescence.

The seventh year, Geralt cannot sleep.

His personal ghosts return with a vengeance, and Geralt was not taught to expiate things that haunt his very soul. He speaks circuitously, in nonspecific terms, to herbalists, who direct him to alchemists, who send him to hedge witches and wet nurses and finally to what Geralt knows as a _haruspex_ but who the villagers call a _peller,_ who fiddles around with knucklebones and speaks in riddles and demands Geralt bring a bear ("Yes, only a bear will do, for 'tis a bear of a problem," the peller says sagely as if this makes any linear kind of sense) and spill its living blood on the floor of his hut.

Geralt has had enough of prophecy and riddles, but the spirit who enters the peller is graciously straightforward. "You have a wish that needs granting," it says, pedantic. "Hunt down those wishes in Rinde. You'll need a net."

So he buys a fishing net, slogs back northwest to Rinde, and sets about hunting down a djinn. He has not slept more than two hours at a stretch in nearly eight months, and his composure is fraying steadily at the edges. He is exhausted, worn thin, covered in weeks-old gore and mud, and mixes up his ripening scent with the monsters he tracks until he is _frustrated,_ too.

This is, of course, when everything goes to fucking shit.

Jaskier's fancies change with the seasons, Geralt reminds himself with the tattered remains of _civility._ Of course he is _lovelorn,_ he is _heartbroken,_ the Countess de Stael has _left_ him, and Geralt _tries._ He tries to hold himself in skillful check, placing the pieces of his mind strategically against Jaskier's onslaught, but Jaskier knows just where to hit. Geralt _taught_ him.

"You know, the Countess de Stael once said to me that Destiny is just the embodiment of the soul's desire to grow..."

"Did you sing to her before she left," Geralt asks. He knows where to hit too, the soft underbelly of Jaskier's self-esteem, and Jaskier started it, he _started it,_ and they're screaming at each other and tugging the little ceramic jar that is the solution to Geralt's problems between them, flash of light and stirring of wind and Geralt just wants to _sleep, he just wants some damn peace—_

Ceramic shatters on the ground.

Jaskier is bleeding.

***

Geralt loves Yennefer as her haunted violet eyes meet his. In every way that counts, here and now, she is a relief. He clutches Jaskier to him, Jaskier who is _dying_ , bleeding from the inside out, who says nothing on each excruciating breath but Geralt's name. Jaskier's last words are worth _more_ than this, this choked plea of _Geralt, Geralt._

For an offering of apple juice, company, and fulfillment of her ulterior motives, Yennefer helps Jaskier. A friend, Geralt answers when she asks, nothing more, and he sees his jagged edges mirrored in her answering smirk that doesn't quite reach her eyes. She toys with him, insults his intelligence, piles innuendo on him, pushes and pushes. She _ensorcels_ him, pries open his mind and fills it with herself, lilac and gooseberries, and Geralt loves a challenge. Naturally, he loves Yennefer.

Jaskier is, predictably, unimpressed.

Geralt, who had not slept until Yennefer made him sleep, who could not be calmed until she drew the poison of near-death from Jaskier's veins, who caught Yennefer's eyes and her meaning and her arresting, beguiling contradictions—

Geralt ignores Jaskier. He tears himself apart on Yennefer, binds himself to her, gifts her with another contradiction, her selfish solipsism entwined with his Path as their legs tangle on the floor of a house she brought down, magnificent in her recklessness. He loves her, lilac and gooseberries and sweat and dust as she throws him down and _takes_ from him. He owes, he gives, with his hands on her hips and his head thrown back against the floor.

It is Jaskier's turn to watch.

When he leaves Rinde, Jaskier leaves with him.

***

 _"I've traced this path..._ No, _I've followed the path so long, I've—weathered this tide..."_

Jaskier strums his lute, composes a new song about Geralt, spoils his horse, and somehow refuses to look at him all at the same time. They go north, this time, toward Caingorn. Over a few days, Geralt attempts, for possibly the first time since setting out on the Path, to start a conversation. Jaskier, for possibly the first time in _his_ thirty-four years, does not engage in conversation. They have short, perfunctory exchanges, punctuated by Jaskier's lute and lines of his nascent ballad.

 _"These lines upon my brow, they—beckon to me, now—warm glow, golden shine—_ Ah, it's no use today, I have no idea how it ends." Speaking to himself, of course, never to Geralt. He jumps to another section of the song, one that Geralt recognizes. _"Weary wolf at end of war, loves aloof apart no more..."_

From the outside in, as a passive observer, Geralt can see Jaskier: Heartbroken, hurt, vindictive, envious, jealous, some combination of them all. To acknowledge it, to let it into him and _know_ , is more than Geralt can bear on the shaky foundations he has rebuilt with Yennefer's help. There is too much buried between him and Jaskier. Geralt has had the better part of a decade to push it down, push it _down_ , drown it in the ice-cold waters that wash down from the mouth of the Gwennlech.

It is unexpectedly difficult to be with Jaskier, now, together and alone. Their edges, shaped to slot together but now dented and rusting, do not fit the same. He leaves Jaskier in Tridam, unable to repair them, and turns east. Any farther west, and he would hit Blaviken.

***

They meet at Hengfors in a collision, hammer striking anvil, sending sparks flying. Jaskier catches sight of Geralt and sidles up to him, shakes his hand, mentions genteelly that he has a room at the inn. Geralt follows him up, and Jaskier locks the door behind them. Geralt has no sooner opened his mouth to speak—doesn't know what he wants to say, exactly, except that Jaskier was _right_ —than Jaskier winds up and proceeds to land what is, all things considered, a rather impressive punch on Geralt's jaw and haul him in for a kiss that smolders.

Geralt catches the spark, has always been kindling to Jaskier's flame, slams him into the bedroom door and falls monstrously upon him. He rips apart fabric in his impatience to suck Jaskier down, feel his fingers clawing at Geralt's hair as Geralt swallows Jaskier's cock until his nose presses to delicate skin and wiry hair.

He catches the spark, he wants to have Jaskier, wants to crawl inside him and sink his teeth into the heart of him. He will settle for this, Jaskier dragging him ungently to his feet and bending Geralt over the bed and _taking_ him, first his fingers and then his cock inside Geralt so considerate in contrast to his harsh treatment. Geralt is in love, he is _in love._ His slow-beating heart howls it to the heavens in defiance of himself.

"Again," he grunts when he comes untouched, pawing at Jaskier's broad body, a beautiful study in texture—hard and soft and coarse and smooth in his ravishing—devastatingly human— _glorious_ middle age. He gets Jaskier on top of him and spreads his thighs and invites Jaskier in. He wraps his legs around Jaskier's waist and the headboard creaks under Geralt's straining muscles as he moans, taken, _claimed,_ Jaskier's nails in his neck and teeth on his chest sending frissons of pain alongside this heat—this pleasure—the friction of in-out—the curses under Jaskier's breath at odds with his gentle eyes, like Geralt is the best thing he's ever seen. The slide of his lips against Geralt's.

"Again," he pleads with Jaskier's face between his legs, licking his own spend from Geralt. Again, again, _again,_ until Geralt breaks on a sob, twin tears rolling down his temples and landing damp in his hair.

In the hazy aftermath, when they finally make it under the blankets, Geralt lies on his side, his nose almost brushing Jaskier's.

"I want to forgive you," Jaskier admits.

"So do it," Geralt whispers into the scant space between them on the ruined bed.

"Say you're sorry." A challenge. Geralt loves a challenge, and he _is,_ he is _so_ sorry, so full of mistakes and regrets. He fears that if he begins to apologize, he may never stop.

Instead of rising to it, he bites the inside of his cheek and says, "For what?"

And Jaskier, who knows it for a genuine question with the wisdom of their twenty years as friends, says, "We can do it day by day."

"What today, then?" Geralt needs to know what Jaskier will absolve now, in this moment when he secrets Geralt away from the laws of man and god and witcher.

Long pause, contemplative. "The fire," Jaskier concludes. "Tell me you're sorry, Geralt. Tell me what happened." He seals this contract with a slow kiss. With Jaskier's arms around him, pressed together in this space that is only theirs, Geralt speaks.

***

Geralt chases down a contract in Caingorn the next day, Jaskier traveling at his side. He takes Jaskier now, on the thin fabric of their bedrolls placed side-by-side, after Jaskier licks across the black veins standing out starkly on Geralt's face and says, "Can I be frank, Geralt, I've never been more turned on in my life."

They lie still next to each other in the afterglow, not touching, content for a moment to breathe the same air. Eventually, Jaskier—who has aged out of a few of his vices, but certainly not lust—guides Geralt's hand back to his stirring cock and says, "The clearing, tonight. Say you're sorry. Tell me."

Geralt hums, low and confidential. He slips his hand over Jaskier's cock, filling out in his grip. "Tell me," Jaskier repeats, and Geralt rolls half on top of Jaskier, presses his cock insistently to Jaskier's hip as he strokes Jaskier off. Closes his eyes against the breathless thrill and conjures up the memory to the slick sounds of sex.

"You were being a shit," he starts, and Jaskier's laugh huffs against Geralt's cheek.

"Candidly put, Geralt," he praises wryly, thighs falling open, and Geralt slides his thumb under the crown of Jaskier's cock to shut him up on a choked moan.

"You threw a knife at me," Geralt groans. His cock _throbs_ to recall it, Jaskier so brazenly self-assured, leaning around him to pull knife from tree trunk. Jaskier's hips jerk up into Geralt's grip as he laughs.

"Of _course_ you get off on that, gods, you ridiculous, gorgeous man, I want you to fuck me again..."

"It was like this," Geralt says and gets Jaskier's hand around them both, wraps his arms around Jaskier's broad chest and flips them so Jaskier can push him into the rocky soil and stroke them off together, fast and sloppy. "You were—rough," Geralt manages, and Jaskier's fervent kisses take on a bite.

"Like this?" he asks sultrily. Follows it with the sting of incisors in the cartilage of Geralt’s ear. Geralt is _alive,_ he _aches._

"Rougher," Geralt confesses, no, begs, and it's enough, he's coming, hard and hot and Jaskier rides his thigh once, twice, before he gives a heartfelt moan into Geralt's neck and follows him off the precipice.

Breathing in fits and starts, Jaskier reminds him, "You're sorry, say you're sorry, Geralt, _please_ —"

"I am. I'm sorry," he mutters into Jaskier's hair, and Jaskier forgives him again.

***

Borch Three Jackdaws has a proposal for Geralt, and Geralt wants none of it. He argues and stipulates as Jaskier flirts clumsily with the whipcord-tight Zerrikanians who have caught his attention today. The attempt to rile Geralt into _doing something about it_ is halfhearted and transparent, not Jaskier's best effort by a long shot.

Geralt has paid the price dearly for his sacred neutrality, and he intends to enjoy every penny of it, and a good day to you, sir. He is winning the verbal tug-of-war handily, and is really quite pleased with his diplomacy, until he catches lilac and gooseberries and lustrous raven-black hair and Yennefer's insolent, suggestive glance across the tavern.

She pushes him. Over the line, to one side, and before Geralt's brain catches up with her—

He knows he is going to agree to Borch's proposal, and Jaskier knows it, too. The Zerrikanians—rhyming names, Téa and Véa—are gone at once from Jaskier's mind as he starts to compose his dissent. "Oh, no, no, _nonono,_ thank you so much for the wine and...pies but, as Geralt said, we _really_ can't get involved..."

"I'm in," Geralt interrupts. Jaskier's whole body goes rigid. He puts his entire heart behind it as he swears, and Geralt hears _please tell me you're sorry, say you are mine_ under Jaskier's earnest, "Mother of bloody fucking mercy, Geralt," but this Geralt will not apologize for.

Later, into the liminal space between awake and asleep: “You made me watch.” There is a wound in Jaskier's tone, still raw, not yet scarred over with the span of time.

“Didn't _make_ you do anything, bard,” Geralt counters, and that's that. Jaskier nods, _fair cop,_ rolls over. Though he doesn't kiss Geralt to sleep tonight, the curve of his back fits to Geralt's front in their bed, and Geralt hopes, _hopes,_ that the morning will bring clarity.

Because he dared, if anything, the situation becomes murkier. He is buffeted between Yennefer, Jaskier, and Borch, but Yennefer has the advantages of magic and fate and thrice-damned _Destiny_ on her side, and he does not particularly want to resist. He loves her, could love her, might, in the glow of her lowlit tent, love her. He notices that he dreads the moment she slips away, leaving behind the Yen-shaped absence of her, just as he has dreaded the loneliness of the road beside Jaskier when they’ve exploded apart, volatile, and the draft of Kaer Morhen in the winter.

She is incandescent. She is greedy. She wants the _world_ and a _child_ and to be the _victor_ here. She fights back-to-back with Geralt, magic and steel, she _scintillates._

And yet. “You made a wish. It's magic. It's not real.” Geralt could be so in love with her, if she would allow it, if he could argue against her and win some true victory, but he cannot, and she whittles her words to a point and thrusts Destiny between his ribs. She wants a child, he has a child.

Fucking Borch. Fucking Destiny, fucking prophecies. "The sorceress will never regain her womb," he intones gravely, and, "Though you don't want to lose her, Geralt, you will."

Jaskier, gods, _Jaskier_ finds Geralt in the ruins of himself and takes the gentle sledgehammer of his desire to Geralt's insides. “We could head to the coast, get away for a while,” Jaskier offered yesterday, _Do what pleases you, life is too short._ Jaskier asked him a second time, _Will you please come with me, be mine, choose me?_

And Geralt flung it in his face, sought out Yen. Yen, who walked away from him— "He already has.” He's _lost_ her already, and—

“Damn it, Jaskier! Why is it whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days, it's you shoveling it?! If life could give me _one_ blessing, it would be to take _you_ off my hands!”

He doesn't mean it to come out like that, means only to drive Jaskier away far and long enough that Geralt can lick his wounds in peace, but the words are in the air between them, then. He sees them soar across the distance, striking true like a bolt from a crossbow: straight, accurate, precise, right to the heart of Jaskier.

He’s blamed Jaskier enough for a lifetime, and Jaskier seems to agree. He puts his hands on his hips, takes a deep breath. “Right, uh. Right, then.” Trying to recover from the shockwave, the reverberations of the last few weeks caving in. “I'll get the rest of the story from the others. See you around, Geralt.”

In the end, Geralt wanted to be left alone. He does not, he decides, like Destiny's sense of humor very much at all.

***

(5+1)

**Winter.**

Geralt carries Ciri in his left arm and leads Roach with his right during the final stretch to Kaer Morhen. Roach, accustomed to the journey up the Killer, bears her burdens of food and equipment with aplomb, placid as Geralt tries and fails not to worry about Ciri. He has packed away her gloves in favor of tucking her hands under his collar, against his shoulder blades. Ten tiny blocks of ice chill Geralt's spine as a result, but her nose had grown pink and then white and begun edging into dangerous blue.

So he picked her up, bundled her shivering body under his heavy cloak, and downed a precious dose of Swallow to bring up his core temperature. She shivers still, but her teeth do not chatter as badly when she speaks, muffled under wool-lined fur.

"How much longer?" she asks, for the third time in as many hours.

"Not long," Geralt answers, the same as he has both times previous.

"I don't think you understand how time works," she asserts, shifting in the crook of his elbow. "Why's it called the Killer?"

"I bet you can figure that out yourself, you're pretty smart."

"What did you call your horse before Roach?"

"Roach."

" _Really?_ "

"She's always been Roach. Eventually, the horse had to fit the name."

"Do all witchers do that, or are you weird?"

"I'm weird, but that stays between us." It is worth the twinge of his dignity to hear her shuddery laugh as she settles. He had expected their meeting to be painful, had not anticipated the way his heart filled to brimming as Ciri crashed into his life. Geralt, barely upright, set eyes on his child of Surprise and saw just that—a child, young and scared. She looks just like Pavetta, but she is guarded, cautious, and headstrong.

The ruin of Kaer Morhen rises out of the threatening blizzard, and Geralt jostles Ciri a bit closer. "There's Kaer Morhen, see? I'm not lying." Her hooded blonde head pops out of Geralt's cloak long enough for her to crane her neck around. She levels Geralt with a haughty grimace, but not before Geralt catches the look of open awe on her face.

"It's not very pretty," she judges as she burrows back into her warm little den.

"It has a lot of stories," Geralt equivocates, "but you'll have to ask someone else to tell them to you."

"You tell good stories." He hugs her, a brief squeeze of nonverbal thanks for her encouragement.

"I had a good teacher." Geralt cannot shake the feeling that Jaskier should be here, and would be here, if Geralt had not cursed Destiny and sent him away.

When the gates swing open to admit Geralt's traveling party, a small flood of witchers pour out, gathering Geralt and Ciri and Roach and bustling them in two directions, people toward the castle proper and horse toward the stables. "Get her bags off and brush her down," Geralt instructs Lambert, who rolls his eyes so far back that Geralt is thankful Ciri has not resurfaced to pick up the habit.

"Yes, Geralt, I know how to put up a horse, even your bitey one."

"She only bites you," Geralt lies baldly, and Ciri shakes with laughter in his arms.

Lambert fixes Geralt with a withering stare he's likely picked up from his Cat. It looks awful on him, and Geralt informs him of this with characteristic tact. Lambert, after threatening to show Geralt what else he's picked up from his traveling companion, lowers the mask long enough to say, "Go, get inside, Geralt. I'll meet you."

The inside of the banquet hall is warm at one end, a fire roaring in the grate, and Geralt deposits Ciri on the floor at last, shaking out the stiff muscles of his left arm. He kneels to push back Ciri's hood and examines her face, relieved to see no evidence of frostbite, there or on the tips of her dainty fingers. When he stands again, they are surrounded. He pulls Ciri to his side protectively.

"Is this Aiden?" Coen asks, arms crossed.

"Hey, fuck you, Coen," Lambert grumbles, and Eskel fails to hide a derisive snort.

Vesemir trains his steady gaze on Geralt. "So this is your child of Surprise."

"His _what_ —? Wait, when did _Geralt_ get a—"

"Lambert," Eskel chides sharply.

Geralt ignores them, answering to Vesemir alone. "We're wanted by Nilfgaard. There are searches out for both of us now, and we hoped to winter here."

"Let me get this straight," Lambert begins again, and Coen hooks an arm around Lambert's neck, dragging him into a stoic headlock and manhandling him from the room.

"Lambert has a point," Vesemir says. "You may bring Nilfgaard to our threshold. Kaer Morhen has always remained neutral."

An untruth, but one that they maintain. "If that happens, we'll leave," Geralt demurs. "Seek out Yennefer."

"You didn't find her?" Eskel blurts, and Geralt's chest hurts to remember the field at Sodden, the names etched on the obelisk.

"She didn't want to be found," Geralt informs him. "She'll find us in her own time."

This is apparently good enough for Vesemir, who hums thoughtfully and gives a curt nod. "Welcome to Kaer Morhen, child," he directs down at Ciri, who meets his stare with her steel spine unbowed.

"My name's Ciri," she objects.

Vesemir smiles. "Ciri it is. I am Vesemir."

Eskel leans down to offer a solemn handshake. "I'm Eskel. It's nice to meet you, princess."

"I'm not a princess anymore," she says, and the weight of her sadness, the hollowness of her voice, moves something in Eskel's expression. "Cintra is gone."

Eskel glances up to Geralt, his brow knitted, inscrutable while they tarry in front of Vesemir. His eyes meet Geralt's, _We will speak later,_ and bounce immediately back to Ciri. "Let's get you a hot meal, then."

***

It is only the habit of long decades that has Geralt checking twice for footsteps on the landing before admitting Eskel to his chambers and pulling shut the door. They have grown up, _survived,_ and Vesemir cannot afford, no longer cares to keep them apart.

Eskel is rugged in the light of oil lamps and candles, shadows playing oddly over his scars. He sits uninvited on the edge of Geralt's own bed, pats the blanket beside him. "Geralt."

Geralt sits. Close, but not quite touching Eskel. He slouches. He feels so heavy, all of a sudden.

They do not look at each other, but both stare straight ahead, as Eskel speaks again. "What happened?"

"Fourteen names. Thirteen bodies."

"Who was the last?"

"Triss. She made it. I couldn't read the last name—"

Small sigh from Eskel. "If it were Yen, you'd know," he says with bravado. Again, it hurts.

"Would I?" Geralt is not sure of himself. He does not know if he can sustain more than one love in his life; each time he tries, reaches out with both hands to _choose_ , he _ruins._ He has Ciri now, his fourth great love. He is not sure he wants to risk reaching back and grasping at Yennefer, too.

"You would," Eskel affirms. They fall into comfortable silence, broken by the pop of some small insect immolated in candle flame.

He does not know how long they sit, taking solace in each other's presence, before Eskel leans back a bit, turning his body slightly to face Geralt. "Wasn't there a bard traveling with you?" he asks, and Geralt cannot hide from Eskel, has never been able to conceal himself from eyes that read him so well. Eskel sees the moment it hits home, the way Geralt's breath hitches to a halt, his body curving, concave, to protect his heart from shattering further. He has found Ciri, but lost Yen, and misses Jaskier like a limb, like he ripped off a part of himself and gave it to Jaskier for the road.

He hurts too much to scream. Hurts too much to sob in pain. Too much to do anything, really, but bear it silently until it won't be borne anymore.

Eskel's hand lands on Geralt's cheek, his amber eyes ( _they were blue_ ) searching Geralt's face. He recognizes Geralt's pain with no effort at all, his scar-twisted lips tightening and eyes shining. "Oh, Geralt," he whispers. "I'm so sorry."

***

The days blend into one another as the snow sets in, rendering the mountains impassible. Geralt consumes his hours training himself, training Ciri, running the walls when he cannot control the wild beat of his too-slow heart, launching himself over the ramparts and chasing down deer and bears and elk and wargs and once, memorably, a mated pair of royal griffins.

He makes himself useful. Tiles roofs, repairs gates, replaces wire in the chicken coop. He sits for hours in the warm sanctuary of Roach's stall and speaks to her, spilling out confessions as she swivels her ears in sympathy. Lies alone in his bed and feels it as an absence.

When it's too much to take, he slips away to Eskel's quarters, kneels next to his bed and lets the reassuring familiar shape of his body lull Geralt into tranquility. He does not sleep curled in Eskel's arms anymore, but this is just as close, existing so vulnerable together.

They touch each other in the twilit dawn with drowsy adoration, Eskel sleepy-soft as he hangs his hand off the edge of the mattress and strokes Geralt's hair, his cheek. Geralt kisses his fingertips, inhales the scent of his skin at palm and wrist, runs the pad of his thumb over the new shape of Eskel's lips that he used to know by feel alone.

***

 _Tap tap tap tap tap..._ "Geralt!" _Tap tap tap taptaptaptaptap_ of little girl careening through the corridors. It approaches, ominous.

 _Taptaptaptaptaptap..._ "Geralt!" She draws out the '-ralt' sound and it stutters as she runs. Geralt closes his book, a bestiary he's been through three times before (a bestiary's cover sewn onto three different ten-crown romance novels), and stretches, bracing for impact.

He gets it in the form of the _whump_ of Ciri's tiny body colliding with his closed door before she swears colorfully, rears back, and renews her assault on Geralt's eardrums. She's knocking with both fists. "Geralt, Geralt, Geralt—"

Geralt will deny to his dying day that he purposely delays in answering, either because he is taunting Ciri or enjoying himself, watching her grow into a holy terror. All things must come to an end, though, and Geralt opens the door to a girl who looks much more official than the one who's just been pounding at it.

She waves a folded parchment in the air. "Uncle Vesemir said this came for you, and to tell you it smells like, uh, flowers and berries? Not sure."

"Lilac and gooseberries," Geralt corrects absently. A shock of cold through his chest slides down his spine. "Give it here, Ciri, please."

"Only because you said please," Ciri acquiesces, proffering the parchment. "Is it a love note?"

"I hope it's a custody agreement," Geralt mutters, dodging Ciri's little fist flying toward his stomach. "Where should you be right now?"

"Lambert's teaching me to catch cats!"

"Is that what he said, his words?"

"Well, no."

"Are you catching cats?"

"That's the thing, is there aren't any cats here. Just Lambert telling me about girls."

Geralt takes a deep, calming breath. Another. Finally, he speaks. "Go see if Eskel is free, Ciri. He'll teach you to make necrophage oil, if you ask nicely."

Vibrating visibly on the spot at the prospect of dicing up monsters, Ciri turns on her heel and sprints off, calling, "Thanks, Geralt!" over her shoulder.

Yennefer is alive. She is not only alive, but evidently safe enough to pen a letter to him. Her handwriting flows in purple ink over the page. _Geralt,_ she calls him in her salutation—not _dear_ or _my_ Geralt, but just _Geralt._ He is so _fond_ of her.

In the letter, she informs him, first and foremost, that she is alive and safe enough to pen a letter. She shifts to reminding him that he has "met his destiny" and she "expects to meet it also," sooner than later, and expresses perfunctory well-wishes about his health and finances.

The end of Yennefer's letter is significantly more troubling.

_By the way, have you seen your bard recently? Gildorf is awfully quiet for the time of year. See enclosed. Remember your wish._

"Enclosed," Geralt asks aloud, and flinches as the letter bursts into flame, a new parchment fluttering midair down to his desk. "Fucking Melitele's _tits,_ Yen," he grumbles, picking up the second parchment with scorched hands. It's a contract, pulled from a notice board, ripped where it had been nailed up.

 _PLAGUE OF BLINDNESS,_ it declares, and details a rash of blindness striking the bards of Novigrad. They go missing for a month and return, eyes blood-streaked and unseeing in their sockets and with no recollection of where they've been. The poster asks for a competent party skilled in medicine to trace the roots of this fever and find a cure, before the taverns of Novigrad become known far and wide for their sightless troubadours. Interested parties may inquire with Barold at the Golden Sturgeon.

Well, shit.

The whole thing stinks of _magic,_ for one. Geralt's more immediate concern is for Jaskier, because Yennefer had not been subtle: Jaskier has been taken. This gives Geralt less than a month to get from Kaer Morhen on the east side of the Continent to Novigrad on the far west, track down this sorcerer, and free Jaskier.

" _Fuck,_ " Geralt moans, carving fingers through his tied-back hair. The leather thong holding it slips to the floor and, with pinpricks of pain all over his scalp, he resolves not to make any rash decisions. Though every fiber of him screams to fly down the stairs, saddle Roach, and take off as fast as she will carry him, Geralt collects himself and goes to find Vesemir.

"What is so urgent about this bard that you'll leave now? You can't see over the ploughing snow, Geralt," Vesemir chastises him, as if he is fresh out of school and new on the Path. "If you go, I'll not stop you, but I urge you to think of the girl. Is the bard worth so much?"

Vesemir and his questions. He doesn't want the answers Geralt can give: That he has spent decades now trying not to need Jaskier, but forgot not to want him. That he sleeps in Eskel's room at night because he no longer feels _whole_ and _healed_ in an empty bed. That Geralt has little agency in his life, and has always been content with it, but that he has love beyond measure in his chest and has chosen to place it with Jaskier, chosen the constant dull throb and stinging spasm of heartbreak over the safety of solitude.

"He's one of mine," is what Geralt says aloud, and Vesemir's face conveys distaste and worry, but he does not object.

"We will watch over Ciri," he promises, and clasps Geralt's forearm. Geralt returns the gesture, bowing his head.

He hunts down Eskel next, finding him in the kitchen with Ciri, the pair of them covered in rotting viscera and at least one of them having a grand time of it. Eskel takes one look at Geralt and tells Ciri to _finish letting the blood into this bucket, no funny business_. He doffs his thick leather gloves and gore-spattered apron, laying them atop the work desk and taking Geralt's elbow to guide them to a more private corner of the room. "Is it...?"

"Yen sent a letter. He's in Novigrad. Taken by a sorcerer. I've got...a month, less."

Eskel's eyes flicker, to Ciri and then back to Geralt. "Ciri?"

"Staying here," Geralt says. "Eskel, I need you to look after her. Please." He checks to make sure Ciri is not eavesdropping, sees that she is preoccupied with her rotfiend corpse, and, before he loses his nerve, lands a quick, chaste kiss to Eskel's lips.

Eskel holds him there, pressed together at the brow. "Of course, Geralt. She's safe with me. We'll learn healing potions next."

"I'll come back," Geralt promises. "By spring. Before spring."

"Just come back," Eskel rebuts, grasping Geralt's forearm in the same way as Vesemir. "All of you, this time."

A final significant glance passes between them before Geralt nods, resolute. He releases Eskel, feeling somehow settled, as though Eskel's simple request to _bring Jaskier with him_ has pardoned him a trespass or two.

Ciri clings to him. "Do you have to go?" she pleads, digging her little fingers into Geralt's back.

"Jaskier's in trouble," he says in nonanswer, but Ciri, who has been forced by fate to grow wise and strong, understands him all the same.

"Will you bring him here?"

"I'll try, Ciri. He's a person, not a nice pair of boots."

"Will he tell me stories?"

"It's getting him to stop that you'll want to ask me about." He hugs her tightly. "Be good, work hard."

"Come back soon."

***

Geralt leaves Kaer Morhen with only Roach and what he can carry with him, trekking as far down the mountain path as he can get without melting the banks of snow covering the road. Already, he keeps up a steady stream of weak Igni, enough melt ice and keep Roach's feet sure on the slush.

 _Remember your wish,_ Yennefer wrote. Geralt has a hunch. When they are out of sight of Kaer Morhen, Geralt slows Roach to a halt. He focuses on Rinde, on Yennefer's naked body swaying in her Chaos, drawing up the memory of his last-ditch attempt to save her.

He repeats the words of his third wish. A portal swirls open in front of him.

Yennefer of fucking Vengerberg. Shouldn't she be preserving her magic? Recuperating from the battle, not sending Geralt cryptic puzzles to solve?

He sighs, grudgingly grateful.

Before he and Roach step through the portal, Geralt already knows where he will come out. True to his intuition, they emerge in an alley just off the noisy bustle of Hierarch Square, Novigrad. Merchants loudly hawk their wares in the main square, shouting to be heard over Nilfgaardian priests decrying northern culture as hedonistic sacrilege and, "Fisticuffs tonight at Farcorners! Come, see Durden the Tailor fight our reigning champion, William Bloodfist! Come one, come all, elf against dwarf! Not to be missed..."

The sun sinks toward the horizon. Geralt leads Roach, picking his way gingerly around stalls and stacks of wares. Where would Jaskier go in this loud, busy city? Where _wouldn't_ Jaskier go, welcome as he is for his face, voice, and coin?

In the end, Geralt goes where Yennefer has directed him. North, through twisting streets and stairs and bridges, to Gildorf, where the brothel Passiflora stands vigilant near St. Gregory's Bridge to Temple Isle. The stablehand compliments Roach profusely as Geralt hands her off, but the madame takes one look at Geralt and reaches under the counter, slamming a bottle of Temerian rye onto the bar.

"You must be the White Wolf," she opens as she pours a generous helping into a lowball and shoves it toward him. "Drink."

"On the house?"

"Half-price," she corrects, counting out the coin he tosses her way, "on account of your services to Master Dandelion."

 _Dandelion?_ Geralt wonders. To the madame, he says, "He's your master?"

"He did say you're funny. He's not one of my girls, nor one of my boys, but he brings in coin all the same. Played here every other night." A frown creases her face and she pushes her steel-grey braid back over her shoulder. "The girls loved him."

"How long," Geralt begins, and the question sticks in his throat. He sips the rye to dislodge it, tries again when the first sip fails. "How long since he's been here, Madame...?"

"Marquise. Serenity. I've not seen Dandelion darken my doorstep three weeks since. Hasn't paid up his room, either. Seems to me he means to come back. You wouldn't know anything about it, would you, Witcher?"

Geralt tips back the rest of the whiskey, fending off the anxiety that eats away at his skull. "Not enough, yet. Which room was his?"

She leads Geralt up a flight of stairs and around a corner, unlocking a nondescript door that opens onto a nondescript room. "Be needing anything else, Witcher?" Geralt shakes his head and she hands him the key. "Lock it behind you."

When she's stowed herself back behind the bar, Geralt gives in to impulse, sweeping into this room that smells of Jaskier and tearing it apart, frenetic, to find any hint as to where he's gone. He has no hope of tracking Jaskier through Novigrad by scent alone, not with the rain and snow and foot traffic on the cobblestones. He pushes his face into the pillow nonetheless, breathing in, feeling as if he may shudder apart. _Jaskier,_ his mind screams in time with the collision of his heart into his ribs. _Jaskier, Jaskier._

As he gives up the Passiflora for a dead end, shakily putting the room to rights, he spies a flier, tucked away in a book of Elven love elegies: A competition of song and poem at the Rosemary and Thyme. A reward of four hundred crowns and continuing patronage from the sponsor.

The Rosemary and Thyme. A competing brothel to the Passiflora; Jaskier has been two-timing madames across Novigrad. Geralt smiles despite himself, startled at the hoarse laugh that sneaks past his lips. "Jaskier," he murmurs, testing out the shape of it in delight. He folds the flier back up, returns it to its place in the pages of the book, and schools his expression from furtive love to what is allowed, his cold neutrality.

Inside, he is alight.

"Any luck?" the madame asks on his way out, as Geralt obligingly downs the second glass of rye she pours him at half-price.

"I have a lead," Geralt confirms. "Gotta see where it goes."

Geralt has drunk four glasses, paid for two, and lost the other two handily in a round of cards by the time he staggers out of the Passiflora, waylaid on his quest by a madame determined to extort coin from his purse. Respect doesn't make history, and it doesn't seem to keep money in his pockets, either.

He leaves Roach with the stablehand who so adores her, walking south—fast enough to clear the alcohol from his system, but not fast enough to attract attention. The Rosemary and Thyme is in the subtly-named Glory Lane district directly across Novigrad, which in Novigrad means going east, then farther west than he went east, crossing a bridge, east again, before, finally, the veranda is in sight.

He strides businesslike through the door, questioning the first whore he sees. She points out the madame to him, and Geralt prepares for the whole routine anew.

No, Master Julian has not been here in three weeks. He has not paid up his room. The boys loved him. She misinterprets the thinning of Geralt's lips as disapproval, but she doesn't withhold the information he seeks.

"Aye, he won the contest. Come to think of it, that's the last time I saw him."

"Where did he go?" Geralt demands.

"Went off with the Benefactor to claim his prize."

 _Got you,_ Geralt gloats inwardly. "Benefactor?"

"He was the one that sponsored the song contest." She hesitates. "He's sponsored several," she divulges, her tone conspiratorial. "Over the last few months. Could be Master Julian's collecting coin elsewhere."

She has just enough information to draw the wrong conclusion, but Geralt pledges to investigate all the same. "He keeps a house in the Bits," she tells him after some prompting. "Dunno why there, it's not like he can't afford Silverton or even Gildorf, but...eccentrics."

Fuck Novigrad, fuck so-called city planners, and may Radovid bust his bony arse on something slippery while Geralt is at it. Geralt's emotions as he ranges back north settle into the familiar: tension of a chase, dull fear and anticipation of what he will find waiting for him at the end of the trail. Few options: the wizard present, or the wizard absent. Jaskier, present, absent, alive, or—

—otherwise.

Geralt quickens his pace to the Bits, ramshackle houses crowding in the closer he gets. _Dunno why there, it's not like he can't afford Silverton or even Gildorf,_ an absent remark. Geralt chases the ozone-and-static of magical interference, but he sees out of the corner of his eye the flash of a knife cutting a purse, smells the putrefying corpse of some unfortunate in an alley. This is why the Bits; this Benefactor could carve out by hand all the eyes of all the bards in Novigrad, and he would still fit right in.

The house is alarmed with wards but otherwise unremarkable. Geralt can, if he strains, distinguish Jaskier's footprints trailing to the door. Geralt stakes it out, doing a quick circuit of the rundown three-story structure. That same _Jaskier_ scent from his pillow (sage and lavender and linseed oil for his lute; the thousand little base, heart, and top notes of human male) rolls fresh and luscious out a second-story window, cracked open to the damp night breeze.

A part of Geralt—a part the sorcerers thought they killed, but that camouflaged itself cleverly and hid within the Wolf—itches to mount a rescue, to cast Aard and watch the door cave in and greet the criminal with a steel sword to the throat.

He reins himself in, gauges the height of the window, and removes his boots, bidding them a fond farewell. He doesn't expect to see them again.

Geralt scales the building next to the warded house, bare feet on awnings and window sills as his fingertips seek purchase in the divots of brick. It isn't easy work, and he's covered in a fine sheen of sweat by the time he's level with the open window, perching precariously on a wooden ledge. The sill is three feet down and at a distance Geralt estimates to be ten feet, a jump whose momentum will send him crashing into unforgiving stone.

He steels himself, sinks into the physicality of his body, and jumps.

Pain. Distress signals from fingertips scraped raw. His skin sears where he hits the exterior of the house. Geralt hangs for a moment, recovering, before heaving himself up, pushing the window open and tumbling into the room.

"Ger— _Geralt?_ You're, you're—Melitele's gods-damned dripping _cunt,_ here, let me see your hands. Oh, that's..." Jaskier seems all at once to register that Geralt is actually _here,_ and surprise-confusion-denial-fear-relief flicker across his face before settling on distress. "You're not wearing any shoes," Jaskier whispers faintly.

"Climbed the wall," Geralt says shortly. "Where's the wizard."

"Downstairs, he'll have sensed you," Jaskier hisses back hurriedly, still holding Geralt's hands in his. "But Geralt, it's no use, it's a curse, he's _cursing_ bards and it is, in point of fact, _insulting_ that it took him so long to get to _me,_ but—"

Footsteps on the staircase. "Geralt, you have to—"

"No," Geralt cuts Jaskier off. The lock clicks, and the Benefactor enters.

"A witcher?" Geralt played out the myriad possibilities of this evening, but somehow did not foresee _pleasant surprise._ " _The_ witcher? Geralt of Rivia?" He is balding, dressed richly in plum-colored robes embroidered with silver, every inch the unthreatening old _eccentric._

Geralt steps in front of Jaskier, shielding him from...what? "The same. I'd like to make this easy. Break the curse."

An affable smile crosses the wizard's face. "Oh, no, I'm afraid I can't do that."

"Can't, or won't?"

"Does it matter?" Geralt feels it, the instant his friendliness takes on the edge of intimidation, laden with magic.

"It matters. Stow it, mage, your tricks don't work on me."

"How unfortunate," the man replies. "In that case, I neither can nor will _break the curse._ You've burgled my house and violated my hospitality, and that's not how _spells_ work, besides."

"Geralt—" Jaskier pipes up, Jaskier with less than a week before he loses his sight, and Geralt sees red.

It's straight back to Plan A. Geralt takes a combustion spell to the chest ("Fuck, Geralt!") and a flying dresser drawer to the head ("Watch out for the _lute,_ Geralt!") and, at one point, is wrapped up and constricted by a sentient area rug ("Oh, gods, _Geralt—_!"). But Geralt has spite and stamina the mage can only dream of. Their fight is over in the heft of steel sword slicing through cervical spine, the mage's head hitting the floor with a final, wet _thud._

Jaskier's face contorts in a disgusted grimace at the tableau. "Really, Geralt." He cocks his hip, folding his arms crossly. "I'm quite angry with you."

"Jaskier."

"...three days, and it's not like I'm _dying,_ it's really very poetic..."

"Jaskier."

"...just _show up_ after a _year and a half_ all heroic and bulging muscles and bare feet, haven't washed your hair in _weeks,_ and _behead_ someone..."

"Please, Jaskier."

"...don't know how to express _love_ or _affection_ or general _feeling_ but you could have written an apology or sent flowers like a _sane person!_ "

" _Jaskier!_ " Geralt yells back, and Jaskier shuts up. "I'm here. I came."

Jaskier uncrosses his arms. Crosses them again. Tucks his hands into his armpits. Bites the inside of his lip, shifts on the spot, struggling visibly with himself, looking younger than his forty-odd years. Geralt holds perfectly still, afraid to break the detente.

"I suppose it's good to see you, while I still can," Jaskier concedes after a while, choked with the identical counterpart to Geralt's aching heartbreak. He sinks down on the broken bed in the wrecked room where he's been kept captive, shoulders trembling. Pushes the heels of his hands against his eyelids, inhales a ragged breath. " _Fuck._ Don't mind me, Geralt. Just, just—"

At a loss, Geralt searches for something, anything to fix this moment. "Say I'm sorry?"

Jaskier laughs bitterly. "Obviously you're sorry, or you wouldn't be _here._ Just, I managed to forget how much I _love_ you. On top of the, you know, _imminent blindness,_ it's a lot to take in."

 _Love._ Not _need,_ or _want,_ but _love._ Geralt catches the word, keeps it covetously in his chest, longing to gather Jaskier up in his arms until this feverish _pain_ runs its course.

He does not touch Jaskier but to rest a hand on his arm. "Downstairs. You can give me the full story."

***

Jaskier sits around the corner of the Benefactor's dining room table from Geralt, nursing a glass of Toussaint red they'd found in the cellar. He looks shaken still, but, of the two of them, only Geralt is actively bleeding. "You know as much as me, then," Jaskier winds up, after giving Geralt a full account of the last month. "And he's far too dead to be negotiated with, so either you do your supernatural thing and come up with a brilliant, unorthodox solution to my problems or I purchase a cane and color-coordinate my glasses to my doublet."

Geralt growls, swirling his own wine in the short-stemmed glass. "There has to be _something._ Magic has very few constants, but it always loves loopholes." Jaskier shoots him a tepid smile. Geralt's insides turn sad little somersaults in response. He will figure this out, he has to. "Can you remember what he said to you, word for word?"

"Do you know who you're _talking_ to, Geralt? I can't remember, but I can probably reconstruct it." He drinks rather a lot of wine very quickly and squints, focusing somewhere past Geralt's head. " _A bard should see..._ no, _look—_ paper, Geralt, please..."

Desperate to be useful in some way, Geralt ransacks the upstairs library until he has quill, ink, and parchment in hand, and Jaskier sets upon it furiously, scribbling and crossing out, talking to himself. He adopts the same posture as when he composes; Geralt worries for Jaskier's spine. He may have had more wine than he thought; he wants to lick the sharp angle of Jaskier's jaw where his stubbled skin catches the light.

"There," Jaskier declares, shoving the parchment toward Geralt with a flourish. "That's it, that's what he said. Never gave me my bloody four hundred crowns either. Do you reckon he has it here, somewhere? I've not paid up my room...rooms."

 _A bard should be able to look into someone's heart and see it as his own, or he is truly blind_. Geralt narrows his eyes at the lines, picks up the wine bottle, and tilts his head back to take a few deep swigs.

"Geralt, could you at least leave the enthusiastic drowning of sorrows for _after_ you get rid of his body?"

"I'm getting into the mindset, bard," he dismisses. The solution is just beyond his mental reach, no matter which direction he comes at it. He can't _think,_ besides, past how he's missed Jaskier, how he hasn't yet pressed his face to Jaskier's skin and covered him in kisses or tasted the savor of his—

Epiphany. "Jaskier, you love me," Geralt overarticulates, setting the now-empty bottle down conclusively.

"Oh, great, we've reached this point. What do you want from me, Witcher?"

It's clear, as much as these things _ever_ are, and Geralt struggles with his wine-warmed mind to get his thoughts from _inside_ to _outside._ "You have to fuck me."

Jaskier drains his glass. "I—what, right now? I'll just _take you over the kitchen table,_ shall I?"

"No, Jaskier, you have to _fuck_ me. Because...it's fucking—love magic, sordid ploughing troubadour courtly romance _bullshit._ "

Several emotions fly over Jaskier's face very fast. "I'm not following," he finally says, his expression pained. "You've said a lot of words."

Geralt leans over with great effort, catching Jaskier's fluttering hands in both of his own. "Do you trust me."

"You really are the worst drunk, Geralt. Don't ask me that."

"Jaskier." Bright blue eyes meet Geralt's, and he has to stop to catch his breath. "Either I'm right or I'm wrong."

"Inspiring such confidence. Go on."

"Can't. That's it. Fuck me. It'll break the spell or it won't. You'll know in three days, regardless."

The tension stretches out between them, thinner and thinner until, finally, it snaps. Jaskier shrugs, standing. He takes off his doublet, folds it, drapes it over the back of his chair. Unbuttons his cuffs, rolls them back. Picks up his own empty wine glass, then Geralt's, then the bottle. He carries them to a side table, placing them in a neat row. Weaves his way back to where Geralt sits, perplexed.

Fists a hand in Geralt's shirt and _yanks,_ throws him onto the table with solid strength that goes straight to Geralt's cock, their lips meeting sharp and brutal, and there are splinters under Geralt's nails where he drags them up the table, seeking purchase. Jaskier kisses devotion and vengeance and swears loudly when Geralt hauls him down to his level, grinding their clothed cocks together and gasping need wetly into Jaskier's ear. A candelabrum crashes to the floor. "Fuck me, Jaskier, inside, _fuck—_ "

"Geralt," Jaskier moans against Geralt's collarbone; Geralt's upper half is naked now, his shirt lost somewhere in the fray. "Gods, you look so good, you're impossible, stop that right this second." He tugs Geralt's enterprising left hand out of his trousers, tucking it to Geralt's chest with a firm pat. "Haven't earned that, darling," he chides. He slides off the rest of Geralt's clothes, unbothered about his own, and produces a tiny vial of oil— _linseed_ when he uncorks it, and Jaskier is going to fuck him with _lute oil_ but his fingers are spreading Geralt apart and his mouth sinks onto Geralt's cock and Geralt can't _breathe,_ can't speak to voice complaint or plea or anything but _Jaskier_ and _gods_ and _more._ He gets a hand in Jaskier's hair, tugs him up and begs wordlessly to be kissed, manages a panting, "Tell me you love me," as he rides Jaskier's fingers, two now, or is it three?

"I do, I love you, Geralt, so much I can't keep it in, I thought you knew," Jaskier sighs, and his voice is soft, but his teeth are sharp at Geralt's ear, sharp when he leans down to suck a livid bruise at Geralt's hip, the inside of each parted thigh. "Gods, look at you, Geralt—"

"No," Geralt protests. "Stop looking. Fuck me, Jaskier, I am _weak,_ and I am _wanting,_ and—" Jaskier kisses the rest of Geralt's words right out of his mouth, hitching Geralt's thighs up. Geralt slides up the table. Grabs onto Jaskier's shoulders, biting his lip on another shameless moan.

He doesn't bother holding back when Jaskier lines up and sinks slickly in to the hilt, one rough motion, and Geralt _yells,_ arching off the table to take in more, deeper, angled to send pleasure surging white-hot through his entire body. Jaskier moves and Geralt's toes curl, his nails leaving welts on pale skin as he hooks his elbows under his own knees and gives himself over to it. He's speaking, some combination of Jaskier's name and curses and needy gasps of _more_ and _harder_ and _like you mean it, break me, Jaskier._

Jaskier responds with sensual kisses, with praise and his perfect cock right where Geralt needs it and his hand stroking Geralt sloppily in time, until the smell and sound and sight of Jaskier flushed and radiant above him is too much. Geralt drags him in for another messy openmouthed kiss and _comes,_ thrusting down and taking Jaskier's cock with the pulsing rhythm of orgasm, and—

"Oh, Geralt, you—I can see—" Jaskier's voice breaks on Geralt's cheek and he's coming, too, but Geralt is lost in his head, in the magic-infused pull of Jaskier's mind on his. "I can see your heart," Jaskier breathes in the comedown.

Sensory images flash behind Geralt's closed eyes. Honeycake in Eskel's fingers, salt on skin, his face drawn in ecstasy; Varin's scuffed leather boots, harsh words, the crack of a whip, the sound of Eskel sobbing, screaming, _abominable sin_. Jaskier, eighteen, fresh-faced, Geralt's fear, the scent of Jaskier's hair, the helpless _want_ Geralt held on to year after year because Geralt _ruins—_

Yennefer's face, unguarded, half in shadow, proud in full sunlight as she leaves—

Ciri, crashing through undergrowth and into Geralt's worn-out body—

Blood in Sabrina Glevissig's blonde hair and stitched scars on Eskel's face, his blue eyes turned to amber and his lips twisted with scar tissue, pressure in Geralt's chest as he sobs, wretched, kneels next to Eskel's bed in the dusky morning; the hasty unevenness of his mouth, their last kiss, the promise Geralt made to him.

"Geralt," Jaskier breathes again. "Gods, Geralt, you didn't _ruin_ him." He holds Geralt's face between his hands and says, "I can see your love in him, in his eyes and the way he finds you in a room, orients himself around you. Like two stars in a constellation. I know he prays every night that you are safe and warm somewhere, and wonders if you do the same, even though you feel like the gods won’t hear. _Gods_ , he is so _beautiful,_ Geralt, I think my heart is breaking."

Jaskier shakes in Geralt's arms as he clings tight. Geralt pushes his nose into Jaskier's hair and inhales deeply, their connection fading into quiet afterglow. "I love you," he confesses, and Jaskier nods, face hidden against Geralt's neck. Tears and sweat mix, dampening his skin.

"I forgive you," Jaskier says thickly, giving a great sniffle and pulling away, wiping impatiently at his swollen eyes. "Of course I love you, you difficult, _impossible_ witcher. Gods." Throaty laugh. "Put that away, Geralt, we're leaving." He gestures sweepingly at Geralt's naked body, still splayed out on the table.

After a long kiss as his payment, Geralt complies.

***

"Can we go to Kaer Morhen?" Jaskier asks as Geralt tosses another chunk of wizard into the harbor.

"Your rooms aren't paid up," Geralt reminds him caustically. "You'll break the hearts of Madame and Marquise Whatever-Their-Names-Are."

"Oh ho _ho,_ my delectable witcher, on the contrary. This," a coinpurse materializes in his hand, "is, by weight, about...sixteen hundred crowns? We're rich men, Geralt."

"Not if you use that to pay off your debts."

"We're rich men for this very particular moment." Another piece of flesh splashes into the harbor. "Disgusting."

Geralt slides his gaze up Jaskier's body, crooking a sardonic eyebrow, before turning back to his methodical dismemberment. "We'll reach Kaer Morhen by spring," he relents. A smile breaks gently over his face.

**Author's Note:**

> ****Tag Warnings: SPOILERS****
> 
> (1) Underage: When the story starts, both Eskel and Geralt are sixteen. They are actively having sex with each other. 
> 
> (2) Canon-typical homophobia, corrective abuse: The Continent, and especially its nobility, is not a fan of homosexuality, to the point where a young noble gets caught with a hunter and hangs himself (TW3, The Beast of White Orchard). Geralt and Eskel are tied to a post and whipped as Vesemir recites anti-sodomy laws (quoted from various English laws) at them. 
> 
> (3) Noncon mind control: Jaskier falls asleep on Geralt and Geralt, in a panic, casts Axii on Jaskier to get him to go away. And then they have sex, and Geralt does it again. Geralt gets caught and confronted eventually. 
> 
> (4) Fights: Geralt and Jaskier are very volatile and occasionally physically violent toward each other through the first part of the story, until they eventually get their act together. The breakup in 1.06 “Bottled Appetites” goes as scripted.
> 
> ****END SPOILERS****
> 
> Thanks for reading if you made it all the way through this one, and even if you didn't! I welcome any and all comments.
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [bas-saarebas.](https://bas-saarebas.tumblr.com)


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